Inoculants or conditioning materials may be applied to treat various types of animal feed when the animal feed is harvested. Forage materials such as hay crops and corn may be treated upon harvesting in which inoculants are applied to the crops during baling or chopping of the crops. Both liquid and dry inoculants/conditioners may be applied in order to achieve a number of purposes to include conditioning the forage material for an increased storage life that prolongs the nutritional value of the forage material.
It is known in the art to apply inoculants to forage materials that have been chopped/baled in automated baling and chopping equipment. For example, it is known to selectively apply inoculants to the harvested crops wherein certain parameters are measured, and the amount of inoculants applied is adjusted to account for the measured parameters. Moisture content of the harvested crop is one measured parameter. However, one noteworthy shortcoming with respect to many prior art systems is that the moisture content of the harvested crop is not measured until that particular portion of the crop has been baled. Therefore, any adjustments made in terms of the type/amount of inoculants applied is conducted retrospectively, and not based upon the actual portion of the harvested crop that enters the baling/chopping machine. This retrospective analysis of the moisture content can result in very inaccurate and otherwise undesirable changes in application of the inoculants since it is well known that moisture content can widely vary in closely adjacent sections of the harvested crop. For example, a field which hosts a crop may have randomly scattered depressions or a slope resulting in a portion of the field lying in an area that naturally collects water and moisture in general. Shading of the field in various locations also results in very different moisture contents depending upon when the crop is harvested during the day.
It is difficult to accurately measure the moisture content of a windrow of forage material entering the intake of a baling machine. As the windrow enters the machine, it is laterally dispersed and must be funneled into a smaller area prior to entering the compaction chamber of the baling machine. Accordingly, this difficulty in measuring moisture content at the intake is why many prior art systems measure moisture content when the forage material is highly compressed in the bail since the compressed forage material is much easier to measure for moisture. This inherent difficulty in measuring moisture at the intake of the baling/chopping machine, coupled with the retrospective moisture analysis in the prior art devices, results in an inaccurate application of adjusted amounts of applied inoculants.
Therefore, there is a particular need for a system and method for applying inoculants to forage material in which the amount of inoculants applied may be adjusted in real time based upon a prospective analysis of measured parameters so that adjusted amounts of inoculants are applied to the actual portions of the forage material in which the parameters were measured.
There is also a need for capturing and recording data regarding measured parameters associated with the harvested crop and the inoculants applied to the harvested crop. This data can be used for production records, cost analysis, and other commercial needs.
There is also a need to provide a user friendly system and method in which an operator of the system can selectively apply inoculants to the forage material both in manual and automatic modes.
There is also a need for providing a system which can be easily incorporated into existing baling/chopping machines without significantly altering the operation of the existing machine.
Each of the above needs is met with the present invention as described below.